News & Updates

This spring, the University of California (UC) Regents’ consideration of a Statement of Principles Against Intolerance sparked a contentious debate about the meaning of antisemitism and efforts to equate it with criticism of Israel. The original proposal explicitly named anti-Zionism, together with antisemitism, as a form of discrimination.

Palestine Legal and our partners took a clear message to the media: by conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, the UC’s proposed Statement of Principles posed an untenable threat to free speech, and misrepresented the nature of campus activism for Palestinian rights.

The Regents responded to the uproar, amending the proposal to condemn “anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism.” This final iteration acknowledges the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, though it is still premised on a negative view of advocacy for Palestinian rights.

But debate on the UC Statement of Principles lifted campus activism for Palestinian rights to a national stage, and made space for mainstream media sources – including The New York Times, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, the Jewish Forward, CBS, Reuters and more – to examine key questions:

What is anti-Zionism? What is wrong with the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism? And what is the campus movement calling for freedom, justice, and equality for Palestinians really about?

Palestine Legal highlights the following important coverage on these questions.

A professor of Jewish History at UCLA penned the aptly-titled “UC Regents Need a History Lesson” in the Jewish Forward, which expanded on the history of debate within the Jewish community about Zionism, belying the position that anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic.

250 faculty members called on the Regents to reject the Statement of Principles:

SJP activists, the ACLU, and Palestine Legal emphasized the campaign to silence speech critical of Israel, including prior attempts to adopt the so-called State Department definition of Anti-Semitism, covered by the local CBS affiliate.

After the vote:

Palestine Legal and our partners remained prominent voices in discussing the impact of this decision.

On April 4, 2016, The New York Times published a Room for Debate series entitled “Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism?” Omar Zahzah, a PhD student at UCLA, and Sherene Seikaly, a professor at UC Santa Barbara both contributed.